This invention is generally related to self-service freezer chests of the type used for displaying and selling frozen comestibles, including packaged ice cream products.
Coin-operated vending machines are in widespread use for selling packaged food products to customers in retail establishments such as convenience stores and service stations. For example, vending machines offer packaged snack items such as chewing gum, nuts and candy bars at room temperature; while another vending machine in the same location may supply hot coffee and still another, frozen ice cream products. A single payment is made by coin deposit into the vending machine for each selection, and the products are selected and dispensed one at a time.
Most vending machines include a transparent panel that permits the customer to view individual food items. Customers purchase a product by depositing one or more coins into the vending machine and pushing a lever or button to select a product. Only one product is vended at a time, and vending occurs only after pre-payment.
In the operation of a self-service freezer chest, pre-payment is not required. A transparent sliding cover or a hinged door can be opened by the customer to gain access to all frozen food products in the freezer compartment at the same time. A customer views the products through the transparent cover, opens the cover and retrieves his selection. The customer may retrieve one or more selections since all products in the freezer chest are simultaneously available. After retrieving one or more products, the customer then proceeds to a cashier and makes payment.
Coin-operated vending machines and self-service freezer chests in convenience stores and other retail outlets are usually owned, stocked and maintained by a distributor who bargains with retail proprietors in a particular market area for floor space. The distributor provides the dispensing units and sells the food products to the retail proprietor at an agreed wholesale price. Typically, a distributor maintains and restocks 200 to 500 dispensing units in various retail stores in a small market territory. In a medium-sized territory, the distributor services 500 to 1500 units, and in a large territory, the distributor services 1500 or more units.
The distributor maintains a warehouse for stocking the packaged products in bulk. The responsibility for maintaining and restocking the units in a particular territory is assigned to a route salesman. Periodically, the salesman visits the operating locations on his route to restock and maintain the dispensing units. The route salesman's duties include loading a delivery truck with various products in a quantity sufficient to restock all of the units assigned to a particular route. After loading the delivery truck, the salesman makes his rounds, visits each retail store on his route and determines what items are needed, restocks each unit, performs maintenance as needed, and prepares an invoice. If a freezer chest or dispensing unit does not require product or service, the salesman proceeds to the next stop. The cost per stop can amount to as much as 2%-3% of the total monthly service overhead allocated to the typical dispensing unit.
There are several inventory monitoring systems that provide remote monitoring of stock levels in coin-operated vending machines. For example, such systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,643 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,784 in which an inventory management system remotely monitors the number of products vended at retail store locations. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,653, the system includes a counter that counts packaged products as each product is dispensed and dropped across a mechanical flipper. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,784, an optical sensor detects a packaged product as it moves through a vending passage, thus generating a product sales count signal that is stored in memory. Inventory information, including the type and quantity of products vended from each unit, is transmitted by modem to an inventory control center for review prior to the next delivery.
Presently, conventional inventory monitoring systems for coin-operated vending machines are not compatible with self-service freezer chests. Consequently, current inventory information for self-service freezer chests is not available to the route salesman. He must overstock his delivery truck so that enough product will be available to replenish all the freezer chest units on his route. Moreover, the salesman is not aware of the locations that will not require restocking on any particular visit. This is an inherently inefficient situation resulting in unnecessary operating expenses and lost sales.
Packaged ice cream products are impulse purchase items that require a clearly visible display to attract customers. The storage bins of conventional freezer chests are deliberately limited in depth so that a customer can see and easily retrieve ice cream items even when the bins are nearly empty. Typically, the bins are wire baskets that hang from console shoulders and extend only about halfway into the freezer compartment. Consequently, the available stock of each item is limited by the depth of the bin.
It becomes more difficult for a customer to inspect and select the frozen ice cream products as the storage bins are depleted. Some freezer compartments do not include internal illumination, thus making it difficult to identify the products that are near the bottom of the bin. As a consequence, some sales will be lost because of the customer's inability to notice or quickly identify a desired product, and also because of the inconvenience caused by the requirement for a close inspection of the products at the bottom of the bin.
Moreover, when the storage bins are low, some customers find it necessary to hold the freezer door open for an extended period while searching and sorting for a particular item, thus causing a loss of the chill factor within the freezer compartment. There is also a disadvantage in that frozen food products that are found near the bottom of a bin are difficult to reach and are considered by some customers to be "out-of-date", stale or "picked over", thus imparting an impression of inferior quality, all leading to lost sales or customer dissatisfaction. One attempt to overcome this particular problem involved the use of two or more stackable baskets that were initially fully stocked and stacked one above the other, and after the upper basket was sold out, it was replaced by the fully loaded lower basket. However, this method has met with little success because it requires the baskets to be rotated from time-to-time, and the route salesman, who has the responsibility for maintaining the freezer chest, is not likely to be present when bin replacement is needed.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system for remotely monitoring the inventory of freezer chest storage units. Moreover, there is a continuing interest in improving the construction of self-service freezer chests so that the frozen products in each storage bin are clearly visible and readily available for inspection and retrieval at all times.